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Columbus’ busiest fire station, serving a large portion of Downtown, is getting a new home along
the Scioto River.

The city plans to spend about $5 million this year in bond money to demolish buildings and clean
up property it owns at Greenlawn Avenue and Scioto Boulevard to relocate Fire Station 2, a cramped
firehouse at 150 E. Fulton St.

It’s unclear how much the new fire station will cost, though the last new station, built in
2008, was about $4.5 million. The city will likely issue more bonds next year or in 2014 to build
the new facility, said the city’s public-safety spokeswoman, Amanda Ford.

“We are still in the early planning stages for the new station so we don’t have a lot of those
details,” said Battalion Chief Michael Fowler, the Fire Division’s spokesman.

Some of the $5 million in the current budget will also pay for the design of the new station on
the former site of a maintenance facility. The money is part of $497 million worth of capital
projects city council approved last week. Voters approved the sale of about $450 million of those
bonds in 2008 as part of the city’s capital-improvement plan.

Ford said the new facility will be substantially larger than the 14,000 square-foot station on
Fulton that houses two engine trucks, a ladder and rescue truck, medic and bomb squad vehicles and
a boat.

Station 2 covers the Downtown area, mainly south of Broad Street. Firefighters and medics there
made about 20,000 emergency runs in 2011, 3,800 more than any other station in the city.

There are 34 fire stations throughout the city that responded to about 280,000 runs in 2011.

Once the new station opens, the plan is to demolish the 50-year-old Fulton building and build a
new station there, Ford said. The Station 2 crews would then be split between the two houses to
improve response times.

“As long as that remains the plan, it should be beneficial since the old building has so many
pieces of equipment and is falling apart from 50 years of use,” said Jack Reall, president of the
International Association of Fire Fighters Local 67, the city’s firefighter union. “They need to
split the houses up because they are so busy.”

The new station would also allow the department to centralize its special units, including its
hazardous materials, bomb and dive squads, at the new location, Fowler said.

“That would allow us to cross-train them there at one place,” he said. “The new station would
also give us quicker access to the freeways and that will help with some response times.”